When someone asks ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity "what is the best tool for managing projects," the AI gives them an answer. Sometimes it lists specific companies by name. Sometimes it gives generic advice. The question is: will your company be mentioned?
This is what some people are starting to call Generative Engine Optimization, or you can just think of it as making sure AI assistants know about you and say good things when asked.
It might sound like a weird new thing to worry about, but usage of AI assistants is growing fast. A lot of people are skipping Google entirely and just asking ChatGPT for recommendations. If you are not showing up in those answers, you are invisible to a growing number of potential customers.
How AI assistants decide what to say
AI assistants get their information from a few sources. They have training data, which is everything they learned from reading the internet before a certain date. They also have access to web search in many cases, which means they can look things up in real time.
When someone asks for a recommendation, the AI considers what it knows from training, what it can find through search, and various signals about which sources are trustworthy.
This means two things matter: whether the AI has heard of you at all, and whether the sources it trusts mention you positively.
What actually helps you show up
First, AI systems need to be able to read your website. This might sound obvious, but some websites accidentally block AI crawlers, or they use so much JavaScript that the actual content never makes it into the page's code. If AI systems cannot read your content, they cannot recommend you.
Second, your content needs to be clear and quotable. When an AI is generating an answer, it often pulls directly from sources it found. Content that starts with a clear, direct answer is more likely to be quoted than content that buries the answer after three paragraphs of introduction.
Third, you need to be mentioned in places the AI trusts. This includes review sites, directories, Reddit discussions, forum posts, and other third-party sources. If multiple independent sources mention you positively, the AI is more likely to include you in its recommendations.
Fourth, you should help AI systems understand what you do. This means using structured data (special code that tells machines what your content is about) and having clear, consistent descriptions of your company everywhere you appear online.
How this relates to regular search optimization
There is a lot of overlap between optimizing for Google and optimizing for AI. Good content is good content. Clear explanations are better than confusing ones. Being mentioned on other sites helps in both cases.
The main difference is format. Google rewards pages that are optimized for their ranking algorithm. AI assistants reward content that is easy to quote and summarize. These are not exactly the same thing, but they are close enough that doing one well usually helps with the other.
What this means for you practically
Do not think of this as a completely separate thing from your other marketing efforts. Instead, think about whether your existing content would work well as an AI response.
When you write a page explaining what your product does, ask yourself: if someone asked an AI assistant about your category, could it quote this page in a helpful answer? If your page starts with vague marketing language and takes five paragraphs to get to the point, the answer is probably no.
We will cover specific tactics in the other guides in this section. For now, just understand that AI discovery is becoming a real source of traffic and customers for many companies, and it is worth paying attention to.